`Stabilization Force' Suggested For Albania

Peacekeeping Envoy Meets With Rioters, New Government

TIRANA, Albania — U.S. military helicopters on a mission to pluck stranded Americans out of this collapsing Balkan capital dodged bullets while diplomats searched for a formula to halt the anarchy.

Aboard an Italian warship in the Adriatic, Franz Vranitzky, special envoy for the 54-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), met separately Friday with ministers from Albania's newly sworn national unity government and representatives of the rioters who now hold sway over most of the country.

Afterward, Vranitzky recommended sending in an international "stabilization force" to restore order. The Albanians "cannot do it themselves," said the former Austrian chancellor.

Most of the diplomatic maneuvering has focused on Albanian President Sali Berisha, the man Albanians are blaming for the collapse of the get-rich-quick pyramid investment schemes.

Berisha's family already has left the country, and rumors are rife that the president's bags are packed as well.

Could Berisha be persuaded to resign? If so, would his departure solve the problem or simply create new ones?

"Clearly, the presence of President Berisha is part of the problem," said OSCE Chairman Niels Petersen of Denmark.

Thus far, no major power has called for Berisha to step down.

"If he resigned, there would definitely be an enormous power vacuum. It would be destabilizing at a time when things are already very destabilized," one Western diplomat said.

A more immediate problem for U.S. officials was the evacuation of American citizens from Albania.

Indiscriminate gunfire kept Tirana's airport closed for a second day, so Marine helicopters landed at the embassy's housing complex and began shuttling the evacuees to Brindisi, an Italian port across the Adriatic.

Several of the helicopters took small arms fire. The evacuation was suspended temporarily after one of the helicopter gunships flying cover for the operation fired on a man who was spotted lifting to his shoulder what may have been a surface-to-air missile or a grenade launcher. The man never fired his weapon.

"We are treating that as an isolated incident," said Marine Col. Emerson Gardner, who heads of the evacuation operation. "There are a lot of people with weapons and a lot of indiscriminate firing."

The Italian military has evacuated about 1,000 foreigners, mostly by helicopter. Britain evacuated its nationals by ferry, and about 410 Americans have been evacuated. Another 50 who want to leave will be taken out when the military decides the helicopter flights can be resumed or an alternative evacuation plan is devised.

Dennis Bell, a Chicago lawyer working on a State Department economic development project in Albania, was among those waiting to leave.

He recounted how he had spent an anxious night in a Tirana hotel. He was listening to the incessant crackle of small arms fire and watching a lone tank drive in circles around the city's main square when the phone rang.

"It was Tom Brokaw. He wanted to know what it felt like being an American in Albania. I told him it was a little scary," Bell said.

Those still waiting to be evacuated are under the protection of 160 Marines who have dug in around the housing compound.

Aside from the competing din of Kalashnikovs and evacuation helicopters, it was relatively quiet in Tirana on Friday.

The looting seems to have subsided. Most residents stayed indoors.

Already, food shortages have begun to appear. In some neighborhoods there was no bread. At the outdoor market in the city's scruffy Bardahyl neighborhood, no meat could be found, and people fought over eggs.

Residents said the distribution of guns had become more organized, and they blamed Berisha's Democratic Party for spreading the weapons.

One resident interviewed by telephone said she watched as men in a Mercedes pulled up at her apartment building and began distributing Kalashnikovs.

"I am looking out my window now. Four of my neighbors are with their faces covered. They are on the street. They are seeing me, and I am seeing them. Now they are shooting in the air. You can hear it? It's incredible. They are children. Fifteen years old," she said.

Overnight in Tirana, 11 people were killed and more than 220 were wounded--most by stray bullets.

On Friday afternoon, a bizarre convoy of two armored personnel carriers and a dozen private cars appeared on Tirana's main boulevard. The cars were packed with leather-jacketed men who fired Kalashnikovs out the windows. For the moment, this appears to be the extent of the central government's ability to project authority.

State television broadcast an urgent appeal from the government for retired military and police personnel and those who have gone AWOL during the crisis to return to their posts and help restore order. It offered to triple the pay of those who come back.

Outside the capital, chaos reigned. In the port of Durres, thousands ransacked the warehouses in the dock area.

The looters were men and women of all ages and social classes. Residents said they recognized police who had taken off their uniforms and joined the pillaging.

Amid the usual clatter of gunfire, they carried off furniture and building supplies. One man was seen pushing a garbage container piled high with stolen goods.

"It's a very sad situation, but the government stole from people, and now the people are stealing back," said Dash Jarvet, 53, a school principal who restricted his takings to some books. He said he was taking them for his students.

In the northern town of Skhodra, where at least seven people have been killed over the last two days, witnesses said armed men broke into the state bank and carried out the vault.